The 2014 CinemaTech Awards: Our Favorite Sci/Tech Movies

With a little guidance by Mythbuster Adam Savage, the second annual PopMech CinemaTech Awards hands out some hardware that really matters—including best alternate universe, coolest vehicles, and best explosion. Can Pacific Rim, Iron Man 3, or Europa Report stop the geek juggernaut Gravity?

Sci-Tech Movie of the Year

Sci-Tech Movie of the Year

Winner: Gravity

Was there another choice? Alfonso Cuarón's story of two astronauts' incredible battle for survival 220 miles above Earth is intense, fresh, and so groundbreaking in its storytelling that it's hard to think of another effects-heavy film with such impact. It's a simple story perfectly told; the drama is never overshadowed by the stunning effects. Cuarón has reset the bar for what's possible with digital environments and 3D, all while keeping his actors' mesmerizing performances front and center. It's an astonishing achievement.

Best Alternate Universe

Best Alternate Universe

Winner: Oblivion

Although the plot won't survive serious scrutiny (incredible coincidences, strange decisions made by most of the characters, including the aliens), Tom Cruise's character, Jack Harper, inhabits a compelling and beautiful (if lonely) post-apocalypse Earth. To achieve his vision, director Joseph Kosinski used some of the oldest of old-school film techniques. Much of the action between Cruise and his lover–coworker (played wonderfully by Andrea Riseborough) takes place in a glass house with jaw-dropping views above the clouds. Nearly all of it was realized without any CG whatsoever. FX supervisor Björn Mayer shot plates of clouds and landscape from atop Hawaii's Haleakala volcano. Instead of compositing these images onto a green screen to be filmed on set, Kosinski projected the cloud plates through the actual set, a process called front projection. It's not only cheaper than CG, it looks better, and it eliminated nearly 500 effects shots. Stanley Kubrick used the same technique in 1968 for his Dawn of Man sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.